How to Make Seamless Textures in Photoshop

One of the most important things when working in CGI and 3d is the absolute need for believable textures. And one of the worst things you can have in a rendered graphic or animation is an object that has an obvious join when the two sides of the texture you have applied meet. This visible line is a dead give away, and shatters the suspension of disbelief. One answer to the problem is seamless textures. Seamless textures are textures that are, in essence, mirrors of themselves in all four directions. What this means is that they can be applied to any 3D object, and the result should show no discontinuity.

There are a large number of seamless textures available out there, free or otherwise, but anyone working in 3d graphics is eventually going to want to know you to create their own seamless textures, since you can create exactly what you want, instead of settling for an approximation. I will be doing this tutorial using Photoshop, but the principle (if not the details) should work with other programs.

The first thing you want to do is open Photoshop. The go to File, and click New. In the dialogue box that pops up, give it a name, and type in the size you want for the image. For the purpose of this tutorial, I am doing one that is 500x500 pixels, but you can use you own settings. I would recommend that you keep it square, since most 3d programs seem to handle square images better. Click OK. Now go to Filters, Render, and then click Difference Clouds. You now have something that looks like image one (assuming that you use the default colors, but if not it still works).

Now go to Filter, Other, and click Offset. In the dialogue box that pops up now, you want to set the width and height to half of whatever your settings were for the image size. In this example, since my image size is 500x500 pixels, I will set each to 250 pixels. The result can be seen in image two. You will notice that although we have solved the problem of the sides no longer matching, we have created anew one in the center. But this is easily solved.

Just go to the healing brush in the Tools panel and (after selecting a point to act as the source for the brush) start removing these inner seams. This requires a bit of practice. You should change the source you are using frequently, and vary the size of the brush you are using. CAUTION! Stay away from the edges, since changing any part of the edge will ruin the seamless effect.

There you have it. You could achieve the same result if you prefer to use a photo instead. Just open the image in Photoshop, crop it down to the size you want, and then follow the instructions above, except for the Difference Clouds.